Russia: Revolution and Civil War with Sir Antony Beevor

[Music] thank you [Music] good afternoon my name is Joel Westfall and it has been my great honor to serve as the deputy director of the Gerald R Ford Presidential Library Museum for nearly six years now I would like to welcome all of you joining us over live on Zoom or the recorded version of today's lecture brought to you by the jlr Ford Presidential Library and Museum and the Gerald R Ford Foundation whose generous support to the library makes programs like these possible following the lecture there will be a q a session so please ask your question using zoom's q a feature below today all one has to do is turn on the television to witness one tragedy after another going on in Ukraine the horrors of War are brought right into the living room with daily reports from reporters social media and our own telephones we did not have this capability when it comes to the Russian Civil War all we have are some still photos therefore we rely on historians like our esteemed lecturer today to write narratives which bring history to life in his latest book Russia Revolution and Civil War Sir Anthony Beaver takes us not only into the important meetings but through the lives of the everyday man and woman as they struggled through this great tragedy many years ago I wrote my Master's thesis on the Don cossack's role in the war So reading Anthony's book brought back quite a lot of memories of my time in rostov on Don doing research there I could go on but let's get down to business Sir Anthony Beaver is one of those historians who literally needs no introduction a master Storyteller who has sold nearly 9 million copies worldwide his books on Stalingrad and Berlin are seminal works and the second world war is one of if not the best single volume history of the conflict ever written it has been my true honor to get to know sir Anthony while working with him setting this up setting up this lecture as well as the lecture on World War II back in February which is available on our YouTube page ladies and gentlemen Sir Anthony Bieber Joe thank you very much indeed thank you sir the Russian Civil War was certainly not a local affair the conflict has extended along the whole of the uh the whole of the uh Eurasian land mass from Central Europe to the Far East and that's more than a six of the world surface as uh Soviet propaganda certainly uh used to emphasize far from being merely an internal clash between Reds and whites it had a mince geopolitical armifications with many countries and foreign troops British French American czechoslovak Japanese Italian Serbian Greek and Romanian it affected all the former parts of the Russian Empire including Finland Estonia Latvia Lithuania Poland Central Asia Siberia and Georgia and the Bolsheviks Red Army included many units of internationalist volunteers former prisoners of war from the German austro-hungarian and Bulgarian armies as well as regiments raised from Chinese laborers many of whom spread the Bolshevik Creed on their eventual return home the death toll of around 10 million civilians and soldiers perhaps even as many as 12 million had major International consequences red Victory led directly to the era of savage totalitarianism what obesity Muslim famously called the Wolfhound century ounce of the horrors and destruction across the former Russian Empire figured in many countries either a frantic Terror of bolshevism or of a white fascist determination to crush all forms of socialism and even liberalism this impersonal cruelty a political ideology and the forensic violence of the in-ranged mob created a vicious circle of fear and I think which led eventually to the Spanish Civil War and then the second World War so although historians recognize the first world war as the original catastrophe of the 20th century it was its aftermath the extended Russian Civil War which became the most influential conflict of the age all the way through to the collapse of a Soviet Union in 1989 or rather 1992 after the fall of the Berlin Wall practicidal Wars are bound to be cruel because their lack of definable front lines because they're instant extension into civilian life and because of the terrible hatreds and suspicions which they engender yet the brutality of the Russian Onslaught which we have seen in Ukraine has raised a debate about its Origins for example David aronovich in the London Times speculated about what he called this casual savagery of Russian troops there can certainly be no doubt that no other nation is much as much as as much a prisoner of their own past and the history and this even if one can never generalize about Russia with all of its different component nationalities and it's historic split between Slava files and westerners getting all the way back to Peter's Idol uh to put inside or Peter the Great above all look at me no such thing as a dna-based national character yet at the same time most countries are often influenced at least subconsciously by a certain self-image or national narrative and this is certainly true of Russia with its belief ever since the Mongolian nations of the 13th century that it is always surrounded by hostile forces Russ contramundum perhaps ever since those invasions the Russian attitude has been conditioned to the idea the conspicuous violence and cruelty is a natural weapon of War fire and sword Terror rape and looting were essential components of the Civil War they also emerged in the second world war as a revenge for the barbarous Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union and we see them again in Ukraine uh yet the most grotesque aspect of Putin's war against Ukraine is his so far hypnotized conviction that is somehow a replay of the victory over Nazism but that's a subject we'll come back to later even just after the first world wars unprecedented Slaughter outside observers could hardly believe the brutality of the battles right across the former Russian Empire for example on the 4th of April 1919 the captain of the royal Navy destroyer HMS Montrose wrote home from the Crimean Coast I called on Colonel rimsky korsakov who commanded the remnants of the czaris lifeguards he asked me to send his compliments to the colonel of our first lifeguards poor chaps no wonder they looked to party of Ruffians as they sat in the low cottage living room the small dirty window dimly illuminated the filthy table they fed around War has made fiends of the illiterate simple-minded superstitioners Russian peasants and Devils of The Reckless drunken pleasure loving aristocracy they wish to exterminate both sides are equally barbarous and the torture applied to prisoners is so inhumane inhuman that I cannot write it here every man carries a grenade fast into his tuning button with which would blow off his own head if he's captured in the centuries before the Revolution which overthrew the Romanov Dentistry Dynasty the Russian Empire had suffered occasional exclusions of terrifying violence the Insurrection of 1773 led by the Cossack person yamelian pugachev promptier Alexander Pushkin to write of a Russian revote senseless and merciless the great writer Maxim Gokey who knew the reality of the oppressed poor better than any Bolshevik had no doubts during that revolution of February 1917 which overthrew the czaris regime he visited the smoldering ruins of the okrana headquarters in petrograd the headquarters of the Stars secret police and he predicted the menchevik Nikolai sukhanov who accompanied him that the Revolution was bound to lead to Asiatic savagery Gorky was not alone in his fear of the horrors to come as the winter of 1917 approached it brought a marched change in mood from hideous optimism to fear the young journalist Constantine postovsky wrote that the mystery Romanticism of the February Revolution was rapidly evaporating along with the belief in Universal happiness he described how the veteran writer Vladimir giliarovsky with his sheepskin cap scrubbing up mustache and horse voice into The Newsroom you suckling babes he growled at all the idealistic youngsters present socialists murdering liberals I know the Russian people and they'll show you yet where lobsters spend the winters ideological civil wars in the 20th century almost always aroused more savagely than State on state Wars because suspicions of fear of being surrounded by treachery are so much greater those trapped in enemy territory had to pretend to have political opinions they abhor just to survive and in societies such as Spain and Russia where men felt obliged to demonstrate conspicuous courage the suppression of fear produced a truly explosive charge of violence when released in although it is one thing to want to exterminate your enemies out of a combination of fear and hatred that does not explain the degree of pointless cruelty which emerged in the Russian Civil War Trillium one factor in the violence came from the dehumanizing effects and Trauma of the Eastern front in the first World War French flag for Russian soldiers along the Eastern front in 1917 running through the Baltic provinces Bella Russia Galicia and Romania was an inhuman experience having dug themselves into the ground wrote Gokey they live in rain and snow in filth in cramped conditions they're being worn out by disease and eaten by Vermin they live like beasts many lacked boots and had to resort to Bass shoes made from birch bark casually clearing stations in the front were almost as primitive as in the Crimean War our name censorship departments could have had little illusion about the state of morale at the front on reading soldiers let us home many complained of being hopelessly outgunned by the German artillery under the athlete callous attitudes of officers towards them men rather brutalized or traumatized by what they saw corpses are still lying there everyone in the letter Ravens have already eaten their eyes and rats are crawling on the bodies oh my God this terrible sight can neither be described or imagined another wrote about a mass grave which your officers had ordered them to dig and fill with their own dead we laid them in there but as it was late we covered half of the hole with Earth and left the other half until the morning we placed a Sentry and it turned out that one of the Dead climbed out of the hull at night and was found sitting on the edge of the Grave while some others have been turning they hadn't been killed just wounded and shocked by the explosions of heavy shells this happens quite often intense resentment was caused by the contrasting conditions between officers and Men many officers retired each night to the warmth and relative comfort of pleasant isbaz behind the front line while our soldiers and sergeants were left in the cold and squalor of the trenches during the pre-revolutionary winter of 1916-1917 criticism of the government of the tsar's government in petrograd did not just come from liberals from the left even the arch conservative politician Vasily schuling was appalled by the irresponsibility of the rich indifferent to the fact that Russian casualties were running at twice the rate of their German and austro-hungarian enemies and here we are irregularly dancing The Last Tango on the breastworks of trenches choked with Corpses as the tumultuous year of 1917 Advanced after the February Revolution more and more soldiers deserted from the front the refusal of local garrisons to obey orders out in the countryside rapidly out and upended the traditional order although some enlightened landowners were tolerated or even protected by their peasants and house servants almost all had to flee during the course of the year there were comparatively few examples of landowners killed in the early spring of 1917 even though many manor houses were set Ablaze yet in the charged atmosphere a minor incident especially when peasants or soldiers managed to seize a store of alcohol could lead to Mindless violence around matsense in May some five thousand peasants and soldiers having looted a wine cellar and a vodka distillery when berserk and over three days set far to Estates in the area they had an uncontrollable urge to smash to set fire to or to defile the precious objects of the nobility and gentry yet their bitterness only increased when they found that destroying or defiling the past did not make the present any better even handing over everything to the peasants seemed to do little good in her father's absence the young princess batarin addressed the local present peasants would come on Mass from the village of Innova she told them that the family had already declared that the whole estate in Manor House were theirs I implore you don't destroy she said don't demolish what is already yours The Peasants stood there silently she wrote they had come with polls and axes with sacks some brought cards someone in the crowd shouted out one landlord is gone there will come another take what you can while you can and the Rampage began horrified young Grand Duke and cousin of the Tsar admitted a new story the people's hatred has been brewing for for too long it was not long before even poor peasants became he became victims too a former artillery officer Alexander marconin received a letter from his small soldier alderley who'd returned home to his small holding as the remains of the tsarist army collapsed the orderly recounted in this letter how a group of Bolsheviks had turned up at their isba and demanded that he surrender his only car I told them he wrote to meconion that the cow was all I had left and then my youngest child needed milk said I could not give her to them very well they answered will Siege with your brat does not need milk anymore and in spite of my struggles they tore my youngest child out of my arms and bashed our head in against a wall then they took my car and left me with my dead baby although a friend of Lenin Maxim Gorky attacked the way that the Bolshevik leader welcomed Mass violence and destruction simply because it made the revolution irreversible Lenin had calculated but once peasants had chased off or massacred land any families and industrial workers had done the same to foreign managers and Factory owners then they would feel forced to defend their games yet Lenin despite the Promises of land and Liberty had every intention of seizing absolute control through this both land and Industry through the Soviets for the state and party with the same deliberate falsehoods he promised peace to the soldiers while determined to turn the imperialist war against Germany into a Universal civil war on the 5th of December a month after the Bolshevik coup d'etat Lenin decided to establish his secret police the checker an acronym for the all-russian all-russia extraordinary commission for combating counter-revolution profiteering and sabotage without any evidence Lenin Blaine the bourgeoisiev starving the cities by interfering with Food Supplies the great communist theory of Wreckers and saboteurs to explain away disastrous mistakes or incompetence thus began well before there was any organized opposition Lenin's declaration of war later that same month could hardly have been clearer water the death against the rich and now hangs on the bush were intellectuals he called for their extermination as lice fleas Vermin and parasites it was sentiment to a call for glass class genocide I must have said here that the Soviet Union fought bitterly in Union in the United Nations in 1948 to prevent the inclusion of class genocide in the definition of the crime laid down in the genocide Convention of the 9th of December 1948. Lenin had every intention a totally transforming the whole of society throughout the former Russian Empire and Beyond by valent upheaval the writer Victor schlosky compared this Reckless experiment to the story from an old Russian folktale in which a devil's Apprentice boasts that he can rejuvenate an old man to restore his youth all he needed to do was first burn him up so he set him on fire but then he found he could not revive him he was indeed a striking parable to illustrate Lenin's total disregard for Humanity in his attempts to transform Society with the creation of the new man homo sovieticus the Checker's head Felix dezinthy was a tool emaciated Pole from a background of impoverished error and ability he had a pale ascetic El Greco face a wispy Wizard's beard and hooded eyes he was a true fanatic devoted to a belief which he would sacrifice everything even his own health and Sanity senior Bolsheviks remarked with a mixture of Pride and fear that Felix would spare not even his own mother in the name of the revolution like his subsequent Ally Stalin zazinski had trained for the priesthood before turning against the Christian religion his determination to unmask every enemy and traitor it's both pictureless and obsessive and yet he was not addicted to bloodlust like some of his successors the killings he left to others utterly Incorruptible he mortified the flesh with the purity of his stance against any form of privilege he would not touch any fool beyond the most basic ration in his office where he slept on the floor wrapped in a great coat was unheated at his insistence Lenin granted the Checker the right to torture and kill without trial or any judicial supervision the mountain of caseloads it became quicker and easier for Checkers to condemn each prisoner to death rather than investigate Checkers found the romanticization of violence combined with self-sacrifice intoxicating in an anthology published by the Checker one of their executioners produced these verses There Is No Greater Joy in or better music than the crunch of broken lives and bones this is why when our eyes are languid and passion begins to seize strongly in the breast I want to write on your sentence one unquavoring thing up against a wall shoot the Checker called itself The Sword and Flame of the Revolution this summed up the Bolsheviks idealized ruthlessness elevating their cause above any human concern such as natural Justice or respect for life had hoped to recruit men with his own spiritual Purity and create a Bolshevik Elite he served them with the black eight level leather Aviator jackets which have been provided earlier by the British government for the fledgling czarist Air Force became a uniform the advantage of leather was that unlike wool it resisted the infestation of typhus bearing lice so under Baltimore black leather became a symbol of privilege and Authority the Checker seemed to Revel in its reputation for nocturnal Terror only works at night to read the historian Gregory errandson ordinary investigators imitate their bosses they are shooting people at night in different parts of Moscow and in Checker basements and sheds those already in prison used to refer to commissar death coming in the night in a full test of the Nazi death squads in Russia less than a quarter of a century later the checkers prisoners were forced to undress complete Lids so that their clothes could be reused they were then made to kneel in sellers or by open Graves so that they are executioners only had to raise their heavy Mouse Epistles with wooden stocks and shoot them in the back of the head some Checkers gloried in the Bloodshed While others were driven insane by the Relentless Slaughter just as Himmler discovered later with his own Einstein scorpion josinski claimed that the ideal checkouts had a Burning Heart a cool head and Clean Hands but Lenin knew any too well that the Checker was also bound to attract criminals killers and Psychopaths maintained that it was funny kaplan's attempted assassination of Lenin in August 1918 which triggered the Red Terror yeah the practice and mindset was already there because their leadership knew that outside the larger cities of the north their supporters were often in a minority Tara linen believed was a vital weapon of War venue to secure the new neutrality uh or apathy of the majority it even if the fear is created during a civil war explain the compulsion to kill your enemies they do not explain where the extremes of pointless torture and sagesome came from was all this just an atavistic part of pushkin's mindless and merciless depiction of Russian revolt or had the frenzy of Vengeance been intensified to another level by the rhetoric of political hatred the horrors it must be said took place mostly far from Oscar in in local Checkers of which to zinc geoson had little control his hope that Checker operatives would keep cool heads was in vain amid The Butchery as he too discovered the new year of 1919 opened with a strange scene inside the Kremlin walls josinski himself usually a man of iron self-control became hopelessly drunk he begged lenient and coming out to shoot him I spilled so much blood he told them that I no longer have the any right to live the start of 1919 the decisive year of the Civil War was truly a period of mixed military fortunes for those Reds and whites across the huge Eurasian landmass the white fins under General malaheim and Triumph with the German help the year before and stood within Striking Distance of petrograd a small white Russian Force also threatened petrograd from Estonian territory but it was singly Ill led by General unich who managed to antagonize both estonians and Finns with his Russian imperial arrogance there were Allied Forces and the British command in North Russia based on momansk and archangel they hope to link up with check forces advancing from Siberia normally under the command of Admiral kochak the supreme ruler of the white Alliance in southern Russia and the Caucasus the white commander-in-chief was General Anton denekin his position was secured by British support and suppliers as well as the sudden agreement of the Don Cossack host sir to submits to his leadership their army had just started a series of bloody reverses but in attempts to capture zard sin on the volca it's ruthless defense allowed Stalin to claim credit for this Victory and later toward the city the name of Stalingrad danikin the leader of the volunteer army which was essentially a tsarist imperialist and believed now also commanding the Don Army and soon as also an army of the Caucasus under the far more charismatic General Baron brangle Rango was a brilliant Cavalry officer tall slim with sunken eyes and an and determination but his ambition became obsessive he could never conceal his contempt for the avuncular danikin that January just as the Reds were celebrating their success against the Don Cossacks on the lower Volga and a rapid Advance across Southern Ukraine brangle took them by surprise his Cuban Cossacks caught up with their 11th Army already weakened by a typhus episode epidemic on its way Northwest to rostov ondan foreign concentrated the best part of his 8 000 sabers the red forces in the 11th Army took up what seemed to them to be an impregnable position along a nearby Ridge but then they cited Bengal squadrons mounting the Steep incline in silence the Cossacks simply ignored the red cirrhatic and Ilan Farm this self-control unsettled by The Defenders badly the red conscription lost their nerve and began to flee the Quran Cossacks pursued the scattered mass for 18 kilometers sabering them down as they ran they surrounded the main Force near the village of spitzerka after a fearful Massacre they marched the 5 000 survivors who surrendered back to petrovskaya for the first time since the start of the Civil War wrote A young Cossack officer of horse artillery prisoners were not shot there were too many of them and to hold the Quran Cavalry division formed a huge open Square an order was shouted the true person or scanners came to attention a triumphant Wrangle on his magnificent black charger galloped into the center he was wearing full Cossack uniform the chaquesco with cartridge cases sewn diagonally on the chest the black Papa has a strikan hat which he wore sideways almost on the back of his head and a woman Barker cloaked thank you my egos he shot you to them and they answered with a deafening [Music] some claim that even many of their prisoners to say Carried Away by the dramatic side that they chaired too brango's victory over the Reds 11th Army also forced their 12th Army to pull back to Astra Khan and this enabled danikin's volunteer army in February to capture all the major towns as far as the Caucasus rate mountain range and join up with the terek COS Act Trotsky was shaken to the core by This Disaster inflicted on their Caspian Caucasus front by a far smaller Force it proved exactly what he had feared the Red Army conscripts were still terrified of the Cross Acts he desperately needed mounted forces too in such a war and an intensive poster campaign proclaimed the unexpected communist slogan proletarians to horse yet the white armies in stark contrast to the centralized red command still little chance of organizing themselves for victory they're an impossible alliance with moderate socialists looting out losing out to reaction with monarchist officers landowners and anti-semitic cross acts who rejected any plan of renewal or reform any attempt at civil Administration collapsed in corruption and chaos a conservative majority just wanted to turn back the clock Cavalry officers when they had a chance would ride out accompanied by Cossacks to take revenge on peasants who wrecked and robbed landed Estates white Terror was not really a strategy of War imposed from above it was much more an attitude of angry disbelief and resentment unrestricted by a complete lack of command and control neither Admiral contract in Siberia nor General Anton denikin the commander-in-chief of the Armed Forces of Southern Russia had the ability or the determination to reign in their generals who blithely ignored orders to stop looting pogrom's rape and summary executions the volunteer army although better discipline could also Rampage out of control at times but without doubt the cross Acts were the worst a young Latvian Cavalry officer called Martin was forcibly recruited by General mamontov's Corps of Don Cossacks just before their Great Raid in October 1919 behind Red Lines we call members of local Soviets unawares in their Villages he wrote and Communists were shocked straight away or hung on the winding gear of the wells that's for women and women their lives were normally spurred but all the young ones were raped during their brief rest period after the raid Alp was billeted together with several young Don Cossack officers who kept approaching him you fought side by side with us but you don't want to join in when they're having fun he replied as carefully as he could I value you as my comrades in arms and I'm happy to sit at the table with you but I didn't want to drink with you I was not able to change their behavior I'll explain but I resisted drinking with them and taking part in their orgies with women especially with the arrested female Communists among whom the worst and principled good Russian women even though they were commoners I felt a great pity for them when they were in the hands of those male dogs soon I could no longer stand it Alp managed to transfer to an infantry regiment even dubious causes can produce romantic Legends of doomed self-sacrifice on the 17th of February 1920 the last hurray the white czaris Cavalry took place in a battle on the Cuban step amid growing resentments between Cossacks and the Russian imperialists of the volunteer army the brother the 22 year old Prince Alexei charcassi described his death in a poignant letter home written on British Red Cross writing paper my dear beloved Papa it was the Lord's will to send us the hardest ordeal I beg you to accept it with the same strength and firmness as I have done our darling Alesha was killed in a Cavalry battle around 304 in the afternoon of the 17th of February he died like a true hero in that terrible battle our integrated God's Cavalry Arrangement lost 11 officers and around 380 soldiers killed or wounded General babovich was ordered to be in the first line attacking bujjoni's cavalry a 10 almost a division of cross acts was supposed to follow behind with another cross act Division averst behind them however one of these divisions then you arrived an hour after the battle finished and the other one never appeared at all our regiment was fighting on the Left Flank its attacked broke up the cavalry charge of the Reds and started chasing them he continued the chase across two streams after that the regiment attacked the enemies reserved and of course great confusion and Asha charged the Reds to chanka but he managed to get away so he attacked a red battery his horse was killed but he bravely continued on foot firing his Browning pistol for the last time reloading his pistol after which he was attacked by a group of Reds because he rushed to his rescue but neither of them was seen after that the Reds had a great numerical advantage and all of them were armed with revolvers so his own possible to fight against some women with left with just our sabers at that time General Pavlov had a reserve of nearly 30 Cavalry regiments damn those bloody cross acts that have left us down so badly like the Reds the whites kill prisoners or forced them into their own ranks at the point of a barrel their worst atrocities however were committed out of bitterness during Retreat and defeat in July 1919 some 2 200 Jews said to have been masses can always slaughtered by Admiral colchach's Northern Army India katrinberg the scene of the massacre of the Imperial family just before the red forces arrived and in November of 1919 as tanikin's armies retreated after the over-extended March on Moscow they too committed atrocities in Revenge for their failure a sergeant Berry from the British military Mission managed to escape from the violent chaos in Belgrade as the Reds approached he reported to his officers on what he'd seen of white Vengeance before they pulled out of the town men and women accused of being pro-olshevik were hanged in the Town Square they were simply strung up and drunken Cossacks hewed their arms and legs off of their swords while the wretched people were still alive in Kiev even the that extreme reaction reversely children was shocked by the behavior of white officers from the volunteer army in one house they hung a commissar by the arms made a fire underneath and slowly cooked him the drunken gang of monarchists surrounding how the Old National Anthem God saved the Tsar when he came to Andrew Smithy programs the whites were not the only perpetrators it is estimated that there were some 1300 anti-semitic programs in Ukraine during the Civil War with some fifty thousand to sixty thousand Jews killed by both sides they've also had programs in Belarus as well but they were not as murderous as those in Ukraine in total a Soviet report of 1920 besides figures of a 150 000 Jews did and as many again badly injured in Ukraine and Southern Russia the red ataman gregoria for being the worst perpetrator Then followed by some of Simeon patliers Ukrainian nationalists and white Cossacks who assumed that all Jews were Bolsheviks and yet all too often Jews were also beaten up and killed by Red Army soldiers thinking they were capitalists in Bourgeois including even impoverished Market Traders Constantine postovsky wrote of Kiev under the white sin 1919 it stayed quiet for a while after danikin took over the president they were not touching the Jews occasionally but any at some distance from the busier streets a few wipes with drug-crazed eyes prancing on their horses would sing their favorite song Black hazards save our Russia beat the Jews for they are the commissars but by the late Autumn of 1919 after Soviet forces had retaken oral and began to drive southwards the mood of the whites changed programs started in the little towns and Villages of Ukraine outside their own territory Cossacks acted all too often as if they were in an enemy country where anything was permitted Red Terror however did not slacken the closer their armies came to Victory Lenin's vocabulary of extermination spread not just through the Civil War extended it extended right into the Soviet polish War of 1920 as part of the bolshevik's plan to create World Revolution by joining up with Communists in Germany and Central Europe that commander-in-chief on the Western Front the 27 year old Mikhail tugachevski was under pressure to capture Warsaw before the middle of August his group of armies nearly a hundred thousand strong were bombarded with propaganda on the 3rd of July the eve of a major assault they were read a proclamation the time of Reckoning has come in the blood of the defeated polish Army we will drown the criminal government of the well the fate of World Revolution is being decided over the corpse of white Poland lies the road to World conflagration on our Bandits we will bring happiness and peace to the trolling masses of mankind peasant families who experience the first red Cavalry Army's looting sprees for pigs chickens or girls would not have recognize their banners or Sabers as instruments of either happiness or peace the first Cavalry Army was commanded by Stalin's cronies Simeon budioni his Kona Mia as it was known was the most notorious when he came to the final act with friends as invasion of the Crimea in November 1920. it's progress into the peninsula was slow because of the Revenge it was taken taking on the work the nurse Anya Ivanov agarova rejoined her colleagues in a white Army Field Hospital which had just been overrun by mujonia's Troopers they had been stripped of all their clothes she read the nurses had been raped their faces were red from being beaten up it was done by bhujani's cavalry the doctors too were crying all the native nurses faces were red they'd cried while they were being raped unless Troopers had slapped their faces demanding that they laugh the doctors had turned away when the nurses were being abused a man from bojonius Cavalry a pressure Doctor Who looked away and punched him in the face you should be happy to see us here do you have any idea who put you on his moral virtue was hard to find anywhere in such a conflict apart from perhaps it's all they put upon peasant women still sharing the last of their food with starving refugees even that Arch conservative shulkin believed that one of the major reasons for the collapse of the white was due tomorrow whereas for the failure of the whites was due to moral collapse but they behaved as badly as their Bushwick enemy the worst nevertheless one subtle yet important difference between the two sides all too often many of the whites represented the worst examples of humanity per ruthless inhumanity however the Bolsheviks were unbeatable thank you very much thank you very much uh Sir Anthony um just to let everybody know we are going to have a q a session now so if you have questions um there's a button below uh it's a q a button you can type your question for Sir Anthony and I will uh get along to that to those questions as soon as possible to start things off I am going to ask uh the first question maybe two depending on how many how many questions come in um from the audience so please at this time um begin your begin your questions while I ask us or Anthony the very first question and uh my first microphone question is this Sir Anthony so the um the the new words in Vogue today um are the are the words and I'm sure many people have heard this the term a useful idiot um so let's speak about Alexander karensky was Alexander karensky either a very useful idiot or was he someone simply politically outmatched by Lenin um was he someone uh who simply did not quite understand what was going on in Russia uh during the first at the end of this first world war and did not understand the malaise and as you had mentioned the kind of moral collapse of the uh of the Russian people um talk a little bit about Alexander karensky and his uh was was he a failure did he did he do his best what what are your thoughts he was a brilliant speaker but also a fantasist the trouble was that he was the only person really uh at soon after the uh February Revolution who could bring the only uh two organizations capable of leading towards the ideal of a constituent assembly uh together and this was the conservative Centrist conservative group from the Duma led by rodzianco but also the petrograd Soviet which wasn't Bolshevik at all it was basically socialist um and he completely underestimated the ability of the Bolsheviks to have any influence because they were tiny uh and remember none of them would be had to be any involvement in the February Revolution at all um most of their leaders who all abroad and didn't even know the revolution that bizard had been overthrown you had uh Stalin in uh still in Exile in Siberia uh Trotsky in North America and uh Lenin in Switzerland um and of course they were struggling to get back to take part as soon as they heard the news now karinsky um somehow uh took over from Prince love who was the first uh should we say prime minister of the uh provisional government as it became there but the provisional government had no power at all the police had all been disbanded um the countryside was in chaos and um they although they were had Ministry is uh and levers or whatever but those levers weren't attached to any any form of power but karinsky thought that purely by his uh emotional speeches to the Troops he could keep Russia in the war which he had been promised to the Western allies and one has to remember that France actually had been basically financing uh Russia uh almost on its own the British had also contributed and obviously the Americans as well but um not to the same degree so out of this feeling that he could uh Inspire the armies he had all of these great uh visits to the front and many of the soldiers were literally in tears and swore that they would fight on to the end of the war um and yet many observers realized that this was totally superficial but it would could collapse at the moment of a battle and so karensky launched this uh big offensive it was an owner really often as the karinsky offensive which turned into the biggest disaster possible for the Russian army and that was the moment of rail colleague complete disintegration but he continued on really as the leader of the provisional government um and again completely underestimated the needs or the uh sorry the uh strength or the abilities of the and Lenin through sheer determination uh realized that actually uh they would act they could easily mount a coup d'etat and they used uh the opportunity when General conilov uh was encouraged to try to not mount a coup but in that basically to sort of stiffen the army after its collapse um and um unfortunately karensky and uh cornelov completely misunderstood the situation and karensky believing there was going to be a coup from the right then almost threw himself into the arms of the extreme left and allowed the Communists to start infiltrating key positions especially in the country intelligence and other areas and Communications and they took over the telephone exchanges and so forth and this gave them the ideal position to launch their cute coup later but right up until the end he was coming up with fatuous claims that um you know he was completely uncontrolled and that there was no threat from the Bolsheviks at all um and then he on the day of course after in fact the day of the uh coup d'etat the Bolsheviks kudeta and in the so-called October Revolution um he had to get he had to flee from petrograd uh in a car from the American Embassy apparently he was dressed in a Serbian uniform but anyway and that was really at the end of karensky saying no he he he completely failed to uh achieve anything that actually he set out to do was that because he was just trying the Middle Road all the time he never really he never really tried to go to the either left or the right to a p he tried to appease all sides and he tried to appease all the sides but at the same time um he just certainly faced a very difficult position because um uh which was to be fair to him um the the whole question was to create the the constituent assembly uh which would be the Parliament and the future of Russian democracy uh but this was partly sabotaged by the Russians who then when it finally met uh by the Sorry by the Communists uh but when they finally met they just disbanded it um but the problem was that um it was delayed and delayed by cost of disagreements and this only created greater frustrations amongst the peasants and the soldiers and the factory workers who wanted uh wanted to know or have confirmed the fact that they'd taken over whatever it was and that they had the right to it so they had very little uh time for the uh provisional government and it's really what Alexander Hertz in the century before in the middle of the 19th century had predicted as the problem of the pregnant Widow this this interregnum between um between two ratio machines where obviously the uh powers that be actually have no powers at all and not totally vulnerable and that was a tragedy for Russia I think a couple questions but I'm going to ask one more hopefully we can get a couple more questions coming in my last question before I get to the questions of our patrons here is that of the uh the Cossacks you had mentioned the Cossacks quite a bit during uh during your lecture I I've wrote on them extensively um my uh my question is that the Cossacks obviously were a very Ultra nationalist force of the czar um and yet we see uh we of course we know about the what happened in 1905 during the very first reveal the 1905 Revolution and then you write actually quite quite well about the issues going on in the the revolution in in March where the Cossacks actually refuse um are actually standing down and as some of them I think you recount a story where uh one they say we're not going to have another 1905 again we are not going to you know um mow down the civilians and petrograd like we did in 1905 and yet we see this kind of reactionary cosign um again in 1919 where they kind of revert back to being more on the white side um talk a little bit about your views of uh of the Cossacks um and they're kind of back and forth and eventually elimination and maybe if you will um the kind of revitalization under Putin with Cossacks the the kind of new czarist cosmic if you will well um yeah there's quite a lot there um now the Cossacks um one has to remember one mustn't generalize um which should be the duty of every historian is to fight generalizations and towards the end of the war not surprisingly many course acts especially the younger ones and some of them became really quite left-wing um were no longer sort of the Lazarus loyalists which the the older generation tended to remain it was it was quite often a generational thing um and that's why we'd start to see a split um during the course of uh later in 1917 where the older Coss act who still believed in their sort of uh oath of the Czar and all the rest of it uh were horrified by lots of the younger cross acts returning from the front um who simply didn't want to even fight against the um growing threat from the Reds and especially in their own sort of areas uh where there started to be also tension with the non-cos acts um the when one started to see a slight rupture but then once the Reds really attacked uh and especially when the uh the the um the Don Cossacks uh were unable really to hold them off during course of that winter of 1917 to 1918. um then that rather focused our minds and uh um they saw or felt that uh you know it was going to have to be War to the death with the Reds um and that is why we started to see them in a much greater strengthening of their sort of fighting Power um until right at the end when again uh we start to see the split uh especially with the monarchists because during the course of uh that period under ataman krasnov uh I'm now talking but very much more of 1918 the time of the uh German occupation of Western Russia and especially Ukraine um the Cossacks wanted to carve out their own independent region as you know any two world show um and to have a sort of Cossack Federation uh Mr post was anathema um to the greater Russian imperialists and this this tension really between uh danikin and uh the imperialists uh and uh the Cossacks and especially the Cuban Cossacks and the uh and the doncos ACT um really started to lead to a disintegration right at the end as we uh as We Know uh as for Putin yes of course um he adores the Cossacks partly because of their ferocity um they are fighting history the increase of the Russian Empire I mean the Russian Empire was basically created by the cross acts with uh not just the advanced uh uh South into uh Ukraine and uh and then um I mean or from Ukraine and then into uh the Caucasus uh but especially in um eastwards all the way and then all the different Siberian Cossack hosts uh which were created uh many of them the most ferocious most cruel of all um and as we know Putin um is much more a supporter of the whites um than of the Reds he may have spoken about the great geopolitical tragedy of the collapse of the Soviet Union but all of the symbols around him in the uh Kremlin um are all Are all uh Imperial they're all czarist um and I'm in the his Palace on the Black Sea is is uh decorated with golden double-headed Eagles in all directions and he brought back the bodies of general tanikin and general couple of uh famous sort of white generals for re burial and for erecting uh monuments in uh honor uh to the horror of many Soviet loyalists not surprisingly I suppose um so the the annoying even the um if you like the the great sort of slav nationalist uh semi-fascist idea uh that the whole Eurasian land mass from uh Vladivostok right through to Dublin of all places um should be uh taken over by the Islamic uh Orthodox uh Purity and spirituality rather than Western corruption um is a sort of a fundamental part of Putin uh and Putin's thinking and of many of those still around him in the Inner Circle of the Kremlin so uh it's it's all linked into that there's a sort of uh the idea is the idea of the cross-section any sort of spiritual form um it may seem a slightly contradiction but uh it's certainly there and his mentality next question comes from uh gleeves Whitney the executive director of the Gerald R Ford foundation and he asks uh Sir Anthony to what extent were the Russian revolutionaries students of the French Revolution and its Terror well to a very large degree at the beginning um that is absolutely true you know they they sang the marseillaise um a sort of rather a rather heavy Uh Russian version um I didn't think it had the sort of the Brio or The Panache of the uh of the French one um but I mean they all parallels were made with the French Revolution time and time again and to a certain degree also with the communal with the Communist 1870 uh overall 1871 but um particularly with the red French Revolution I mean the whole business of red and white comes from the French Revolution with the the red phrygian caps of the French revolutionaries and the white cockade of the bourbon uh on the other side um even some of the killing methods came from the French Revolution not the guillotine but um the Noir the um the sinking of uh uh barges with uh prisoners tied up on board and in rivers and off the coast numbers of things like that so there were constant parallels in that particular way the fact of uh um there was always there for a debate on who would be the Napoleon of the French Revolution and karensky at times thought that he would be the Napoleon of the French Revolution um say the general conanov um and um and then sort of later you know other sort of thought that they might take out on that particular road so these historical parallels which was always turned out to be completely uh misleading uh were very much a part of the time uh next question comes from my um actually much better half uh Tatiana Westfall and she asks how many assassination attempts were there made against Lenin who was behind them and why did they fail well they've these are the first ones but one evening and it wasn't a very effective one where shots revolver shot so far in his car uh by two sort of unidentified anti-bolsheviks um at one night I mean it was right at the beginning of um right at the beginning of 1918 um the most important one of course was the fanny Captain uh Chief had uh she managed to hit him with two shots one sort of I think within was not fatal at all or dangerous uh but the other one of them got him in the neck um and he very very nearly died I mean there's no doubt about it she was just saved by a uh by sort of uh good good uh doctors um but this was important in the sense that it was a um uh the moment when he actually became part of a personality cult um the the anger uh amongst sort of you know loyal was so intense um and um his portrait then suddenly became um I mean he hadn't been funny enough up until uh even the coup d'etat but she nobody knew what his face looked like um no suddenly you know there were photographs everywhere and um people even used to cut them out of uh uh newspapers and stick them up where they'd had um icons before with a candle in front of it um in sort of what was sort of became now no longer the holy corner but the Red Corner uh in their sort of person bisbas those were further obviously loyal Communists but there was definitely a sort of uh uh a um a sort of secular sainthood uh created around him and which of course uh Stalin then sort of tried to profit from later um you know with his uh His Image up there with uh with Lenin um but basically um Lenin was not known for a great deal of uh physical courage um and he spent most of his time guarded by his uh Latvian bodyguards um um from the uh Latvian rifle division um behind Kremlin walls or um when as soon as they said once they'd moved to Once they'd moved to Moscow um so um on the hill when it came to um even before the actual Revolution um Lenin was pretty cautious uh on where he went on meetings and so forth uh but that was those were the sort of the two most two most important um and uh as I say this was in many ways part of the foundation of the of the Lenin myth uh that uh um he was he was sort of you know in a country which had been to we say so focused on religion on the Orthodox religion um Lenin was turned into a form of uh surrogate uh surrogate saint here we have uh time for one last question uh and that comes from uh Christine wild boar um and she asks it was mentioned that there were uh anti-jewish attacks I am wondering if it was a re a peat of a pattern seen elsewhere that the attacks on Jews preceded greater attacks on various parts of the population leading to or as part of a growth in nationalism um it's an interesting uh question of to what degree German and Russian anti-Semitism um developed in different ways uh and affected each other I mean the the sort of the German um nationalism uh ideas of racial Purity I think when she were rather different um so I'm slightly cautious on that I think there's no doubt about it that uh Russian anti-Semitism uh certainly seemed to infect German and his emergism After the Revolution um but anyway the point was that um beforehand the black hundreds as they were called uh which actually were supported by Tsar Nicholas II um were in many ways the creation or the stimulus for young Jews particularly well-educated or uh and extremely intelligent uh to support the bolsh fix and this then became sort of a vicious circle to convince the whites um that basically sort of you know all Jews were Bolsheviks by definition which was certainly not the case um many of them many of them were actually um sort of horrified because uh it meant that um you know those who'd been um even as I was saying Market Traders uh but certainly those who had been Merchants purely because they weren't allowed to own land and therefore they could never be Farmers uh or particularly if they were corn Merchants uh they were always suspected of having cheated The Peasants uh in the sale or the purchase of of corn um so that was one of the sort of great uh vulnerabilities in that particular way um there was also the question of um and then we go much further forward in history uh when it came to the uh great Ukrainian famine um the Communists uh tried to pass around rumors that actually it was the Jews who were responsible for the famine not the Soviets uh which was perhaps one of the contributions were to the idea of of some ukrainians when the Germans invaded that uh that it really had been the fault of the Jews and uh and that was why many are a number of uh ukrainians actually had joined the Germans and uh and even became a concentration camp guards so the interrelationship between that very very um in Curious uh and important relationship between Germany and Russia uh not just in terms of the conflict of the second world war but uh of earlier um is an area for certainly always greatest greater study uh and particularly the way that um Russian anti-Semitism uh did feed into uh from the whites did feed into uh German Nazism uh and its own version of uh extreme anti-Semitism as well foreign first of all I'd like to uh thank Sir Anthony for uh providing this wonderful lecture I have one more question here but this is more of an administrative question I'll answer myself and that is um will there will this recording um have closed captions um this is one of the issues with zoom um and I can I can say that many of our previous Zoom lectures as well as many of our lectures that we've had on our YouTube page during the pandemic we did Tran did started a transcribing can't promise to say to say when we'll get around to doing this one uh but it is something that we will certainly put on our docket and thank you Lynn for that uh for that great question and now I will turn things over to the executive director of the Gerald R Ford foundation and our partner please Whitney well thank you so much Joel and and thank you sir Anthony for just another really enlightening and wonderful uh presentation a chilling depiction of the 1917 Russian Revolution it's aftermath is a cataclysm that continues to impact Russia Ukraine and the world profoundly a century later as you so ably pointed out a shout out also to our friends of Ford who underwrite this and so many other programs we host and to my good partners at the Gerald R Ford library and Museum Brooklyn Joel Westfall and their wonderful staff you know programs like sir Anthony's are what make the Ford a truly special place if your mind was enriched if your perspective was challenged if you enjoyed learning something new and fascinating then we hosted a successful event and we we hope you will follow up by visiting the outstanding collections in the Ford Presidential Library in Ann Arbor and The Illuminating exhibits in the Ford Presidential Museum in Grand Rapids also if you're not already please consider becoming a friend of Ford and help support our efforts to sign up and see our upcoming programs and Exhibits visit our website which will appear on your screen in just a moment there we will find an array of resources to learn more about our 38th president and his virtue anchored leadership which is very much needed these days in America and Beyond so thank you for joining us in the important work we do I'm gleaves Whitney wishing you a good day [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music]

Channel: Gerald R. Ford

Views: 9,243

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Id: WbGz2x_v1ho

Length: 70min 45sec (4245 seconds)

Published: Tue Oct 11 2022